I think it's fascinating that now you can ask Bill James a question about the validity of advanced fielding statistics, and have him respond with an anecdote of his own limited personal experience to support them. That it's the exact opposite of what he was doing 30 years ago is delightful irony. It means we've long since won the war he started.

I just e-mailed Bill that a turn-of-the-20th-century outfielder named John Anderson once tried stealing second with a runner on second. This blunder became known for awhile as a "John Anderson play."

The John Anderson example is meaningless outside of baseball, and Charley Horse is only relevant to the category if his name was actually Charley Horse. There are many baseball phrases which are widely used, like "out of left field" and "playing hard ball" and "making the big leagues", but the question was about a player's name entering the language.

[Barney] is making plays that other 2B aren't making but could even if credit should probably go to Sveum and the coaches rather than Barney.

The Baby Ruth bar.

It's not just bWAR that grades Lawrie as historically great with the glove; plus-minus does as well. The Jays don't shift THAT much, do they? I have a hard time believing the shift is entirely, or even mostly, responsible for making a +10 fielder look like a +60 fielder (plus-minus has Lawrie at +40 so far this year).

A Japanese friend once told him, “You know, the thing about your World Series is, it’s the same players every year, but on different teams.” That’s kind of how I thought about Lofton and Roberto Alomar; it seemed like they were in the post-season every year, but you never knew what team they would be on.

Wrigley's Gum.

UZR ignores shift plays entirely and has him at +9 on the year, not +32.

It's not just bWAR that grades Lawrie as historically great with the glove; plus-minus does as well. The Jays don't shift THAT much, do they? I have a hard time believing the shift is entirely, or even mostly, responsible for making a +10 fielder look like a +60 fielder (plus-minus has Lawrie at +40 so far this year).

I think that goes too far the other way, and I disapprove of UZR just ignoring selective plays because they don't match up to its theoretical framework.

How are you supposed to measure it though?

How are you supposed to measure it though? UZR and other defensive metrics are based off of comparing the player to his peers. If his peers aren't moving around the diamond, how do you credit or debit someone for playing out of position?

Perhaps, since Lawrie is effectively playing a defensive position unique in baseball, the defensive metric just weren't built to handle this situation.

Maybe a solution for now is just not to count plays made when playing a non-traditional position?

As to the issue of defensive stats generally, the problem is not the limitation of the defensive stats; the problem is that people treat defensive stats with the same confidence as offensive stats. Isn't that what WAR does, after all? Just add oWAR and dWAR as if they're both calculated to the same degree of confidence?